Today we’d like to introduce you to Myra Gleason.
Hi Myra, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My husband and I started our careers as touring musicians and songwriters, originally performing under the name Stereo RV before rebranding to GLEESON after the pandemic reshaped the live music industry. We’re both born-and-raised West Coasters and were living in Sacramento, California in 2020 when everything came to a sudden halt.
We had just come off a tour where we sold out 50-cap rooms in nine different markets across the United States. We finally felt that momentum was building as we were in conversations around management and agency representation — and then, almost overnight, COVID hit and POOF! Live touring vanished.
For me personally, that season triggered a deep identity shift. I had an honest crisis of wondering who I was off the stage and whether I had worth outside the applause of a crowd.
During the pandemic, I took a job as a barista in a small-town coffee shop. At the same time, I was coaching other artists, doing PR work for live-streaming brands, and writing for TV and film. It was a definitely a layered season.
That’s also when I became an avid gardener. What started as therapy turned into storytelling — and eventually a brand of its own. I fell in love with the symbolism of growth, seasons, and tending something slowly.
Opening our own coffee shop wasn’t originally the plan. But after a couple of years, we faced a reality many Californians know well; our income could sustain us, but it couldn’t buy us a home. We realized our money might not plant roots in California… but it could plant a business… just also not in California (HA)
A friend of ours who was living in Kansas City at the time told us about a small town called Iola, Kansas. Out of curiosity, I started researching it and was genuinely perplexed that a town with a college didn’t have a specialty coffee shop. Between that gap in the market — and the affordability of rent — that was all it took for us to take the leap and leave California to build something from the ground up in the Midwest.
My husband Gabe’s background as a professional chef made the transition feel even more aligned. Coffee shops were actually some of the first venues we ever toured in, so in many ways, opening one felt like coming full circle.
In 2022, we opened Wild Bloom Coffee (and expanded to a Drive-Thru location off of HWY 169 in June of 2024) – Our vision has always been to create a space and a culture where people feel seen and heard –whether that’s through thoughtfully crafted food, Coffee, or the experiences we host within our walls.
We’re a chef-inspired coffee shop, meaning we approach our menu the same way a restaurant would. Ingredients matter. Seasonality matters. Presentation matters. From our house-made syrups and rotating specials to elevated brunch items and desserts, everything is created with a culinary lens rather than a traditional café model.
That foundation naturally led us to expand beyond daytime service. We launched Supper Club- a series of curated private dining experiences where Gabe steps fully into his chef background. These evenings are intimate, story-driven, and designed to bring people together around a beautifully crafted meal. It’s been one of the most meaningful extensions of our brand, blending hospitality, artistry, and community in a deeper way.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I don’t think entrepreneurship is ever a smooth road, you’re constantly learning in real time.
I have a saying that “all business is the same, it’s just the product that’s different.” Once you understand operations, people management, systems, and finances, the core principles overlap — but when you add a brick-and-mortar layer on top of that, everything heightens. The stakes, the overhead, the staffing, the daily problem-solving… it’s all amplified.
As creatives stepping into the hospitality space, we’re deeply in tune with how something should make people feel; how a brand breathes, how an environment holds emotion, how experiences translate. That sensitivity is a strength, but it also means you feel the pressure more acutely when you’re building something physical and community-facing.
I often think about that meme of the cartoon dog sitting in a burning room saying, “This is fine.” That’s entrepreneurship in a nutshell! You just learn over time which fire needs to be put out first.
Building anything meant to last requires resilience. There are long hours, financial risks, staffing challenges, and seasons where growth feels slower than the vision in your head. But those stretches are where the real foundation gets laid.
One of our biggest unexpected challenges honestly was cultural. Moving from the West Coast to the Midwest was a significant adjustment, I mean, not just geographically, but relationally and professionally. Communication styles, pace of business, customer expectations – – even how trust is built — are very different.
We had to learn the language of the Midwest in many ways. How people prefer to be served, how community is formed, how business relationships develop. That learning curve required humility and observation, but it ultimately made us better operators and better neighbors.
Looking back, the road hasn’t been smooth, but it’s been deeply formative. Every challenge sharpened our vision, strengthened our endurance, and helped us build something more rooted than we could have imagined at the start.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Wild Bloom Coffee?
I feel like we’re creatives who’ve had to figure life out beyond the stage and the music industry. For so long, our identity and livelihood were rooted in touring, writing, and performing, so when that season closed, we had to reimagine what creating looked like in a more grounded, everyday way.
Coffee shops have always been woven into creative culture, so in many ways, this felt like a natural shift for us.
When you’re on stage, you’re not just performing songs, you’re taking authority over the room. You’re leading people emotionally. You’re creating atmosphere, pacing, energy, and connection through sound.
We realized we were doing the same thing – just in a different medium.
How you guide an audience through a set list… we now guide guests through an experience.
How you build mood through music… we build through space, design, and hospitality.
How you leave someone feeling after a show… we think about how someone feels when they leave our shop.
We’ve been deeply intentional about that translation.
We make about 90% of our syrups in-house, we operate very scratch-kitchen forward, and we’ve built a bit of a reputation for unique, sometimes unexpected flavor profiles. That chef influence shows up everywhere — from our seasonal lattes to our food specials.
We’re kinda shocked that people are traveling from bigger metropolitan areas to try our food and step into our cafe. I think just our artist background steps in and is like ” these people actually paid to come see us?” — kind of makes you feel like you’re making your mark on the world. Like, “wow, someone I have never met has heard of us..” We’re pretty pumped every time someone says they traveled to try us.
Our private dinners (Supper Club) have really been a beautiful extension of what we do. We are big fans of curation, whether through food or experiences.
And I think what a lot of people don’t always realize is that rural areas – especially rural Kansas – can be what you’d consider a bit of a food desert. Access to elevated culinary experiences or even exposure to diverse flavor profiles can be VERY limited.
So part of what we’re doing, beyond just serving coffee, is expanding palates, introducing new experiences, and offering quality that might otherwise require a drive to a major city.
But if I had to name what I’m most proud of, it wouldn’t be the menu, it would be the community that’s formed around the shop.
It’s one thing to call yourself a community space. A lot of businesses do that.
But we’ve been incredibly grateful to actually become an anchor in our town. We’re a place where people gather, celebrate, process life, and connect. Watching Wild Bloom evolve into that kind of cornerstone has been the most meaningful reward of all.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
I’m deeply aware that small experiences can leave lasting impressions.
So what matters most to me is people — always people.
I think everything I’ve done professionally, even when it looked different on the surface, has really been rooted in that same core value: creating spaces where people feel seen.
Before entrepreneurship, I spent over a decade working with children in the foster care system. You learn how to show up for people who are reliant on systems, and who, in many cases, haven’t always experienced the world as safe or kind.
At the same time, my background in music was forming another side of that same instinct.
When you’re on stage, you’re not just performing .. you’re holding emotional space for a room. You’re guiding people through joy, grief, hope, nostalgia… sometimes all in one set. You realize quickly that art isn’t about you, it’s about how it makes other people feel.
I mean, if you wanna make a buck at anything, make it about people because those are your biggest ROI’s.
Both foster care and music were training grounds for what I do now, I just express it differently.
Coffee shops are often the place people have their first conversations in the morning so it’s important that we’ve kinda built this space on advocacy and artistry.
Pricing:
- Supper Club dinners $100 – $125 per person
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wildbloomcoffeesek.com
- Instagram: @wildbloomsek
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wildbloomcoffeeSEK
- Email: [email protected]
